IMMIGRANTS should be sent home after four years to stop Britain’s population spiralling out of control, say MPs.

A cross-party group will tomorrow demand strict new quotas not only on immigrants arriving in Britain but those allowed to stay for good.

Workers from outside the European Union would be given four-year visas, after which time they would be expected to return to their own countries.

Only highly skilled applicants would be allowed to stay on and then only if the Government had not reached an annual cap on economic migrants.

The move could mean between 150,000 and 170,000 people a year would be stripped of their right to settle here and sent home.

In the past decade 750,000 British people have quit the UK while 2.5million migrants have arrived. Next year, England is expected to become the most crowded country in Europe, overtaking Holland.

Left unchecked, the net influx of immigrants will swell England’s population by a further seven million within 25 years – the equivalent of seven cities the size of Birmingham.

On Tuesday the Home Office will unveil more details of its new system for work permits, designed to attract highly skilled immigrants. But the scheme will be overshadowed by the launch of the Cross Party Group on Immigration, headed by former Labour and Conservative ministers Frank Field and Nicholas Soames.

The group’s report, drawn up by Migrationwatch, proposes pressing ahead with Labour’s points system but limiting visas to four years.

“Thereafter they would be expected to return to their own countries (or move elsewhere) and make good use of the experience they had gained in Britain,” the report says. Those wishing to settle would have to apply through a second points system based on skills, with provision for “exceptional intellectual, scientific or artistic merit”.

Those with sufficient points would only be allowed to stay permanently in Britain, however, if they did not breach the annual quota.

The report suggests this be set at 20,000 a year, including dependants. “If the quota was already full the applicant would have to leave the UK.”

The report suggests up to 170,000 people a year would no longer acquire the right to settle here through marriage to a British citizen or as a dependant. It says: “This would be a major step towards bringing down the number of immigrants to approximately the number of British citizens who are emigrating.”

The report, called Balanced Migration, claims the plans would stabilise England’s population, (which stands at 51million) at 65million by 2050, compared with a projected 78.6million.

This, it argues, would allow Britain to remain competitive and greatly reduce the pressures on public services and society. “Doing nothing is simply not an option,” it says.

The report warns that unless we act soon mass immigration will put an intolerable strain on public services and the environment and even threaten the “cohesion of our society”.

The proposal was immediately criticised by the centre-left thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research. Jill Rutter, senior research fellow, said: “The proposal that migrant workers should leave the UK after a four-year period of work would mean that employers could not retain the hard-working migrants they want to keep.

For example, football clubs would have to lose talent such as Kanu, Viduka and Drogba. We need to make migration work for Britain, rather than play to xenophobic sentiments.”

The idea could also fuel problems of illegal immigration, with those nearing the end of their four-year visa simply disappearing.

According to Government statistics one immigrant arrives in Britain every minute. Successful asylum claims account for just three per cent.

This is the first time that senior politicians from rival parties have come together to tackle immigration.

Former welfare minister Mr Field said “lower paid black and white Britons” were paying the highest price of the “unprecedented wave of immigration” with wages been driven down, schools and hospitals under strain and waiting lists for social housing growing.

They had also seen their neighbourhoods transformed “from settled working-class communities to societies which they can barely recognise”. Mr Soames called for urgent debate on a “critical issue that must be tackled”.

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